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"Deeper and Deeper" Now frequently solicited to lend his support to radical causes, and often soliciting the support of others for the same purpose, Chomsky was acutely conscious of the price one had to pay for being a dissenting voice on the domestic scene. He knew what had happened to figures such as Rosa Luxemburg (murdered), Antonio Gramsci (jailed), Bertrand Russell (jailed, as well), Karl Korsch (marginalized), and Sacco and Vanzetti (executed). In short, by the early sixties Noam Chomsky was faced with a dilemma that was to have dramatic consequences. He was being forced to make a conscious decision about the kind of life he would lead. He had a family to consider, a private life, and related responsibilities. He had a flourishing university career, and could anticipate a future filled with rewards both symbolic and tangible. And he had the same number of working hours in a day as anybody else ­ far too few to sustain ongoing intellectual and polemical debates on a variety of fronts. But Chomsky was, and is, driven: his commitment to the ideal of the good society inspired him to work at a furious intensity. There was no turning back. He undertook to question the government policies that gave rise to the major issues of this period: the ongoing embargo of Cuba and the many terrorist acts directed against the Cubans by the Kennedy administration, the war in Indochina, the arms race, Soviet-American relations, the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia, Sino-American relations, American involvement in the Middle East, and the role of the intellectual in all of these. Looking back on this volatile time, Chomsky has said: I knew that I was just too intolerably self-indulgent merely to take a passive role in the struggles that were then going on. And I knew that signing petitions, sending money, and showing up now and then at a meeting was not enough. I thought it was critically necessary to take a more active role, and I was well aware of what that would mean. It is not a matter of putting a foot in the water, now and then, getting it wet and then leaving. You go in deeper and deeper. And I knew that I would be following a course that would confront privilege and authority. ("Noam Chomsky" 66) It was not, then, just a matter of undermining his own status in the academy or giving up his free time. He would have to oppose a powerful ruling class whose interests were deeply entrenched and jealously defended. Historically, it is a truism that people who uphold libertarian ideas will suffer for it. Chomsky was to spend long nights in custody and was threatened with lengthy jail terms; he even ended up on Richard Nixon's enemy list. It finally got to the point where Carol returned to university to study linguistics so that she would be prepared to support the family in the now-likely event that Noam would no longer be able to do so. How could this happen? Wasn't this America, land of free expression? Didn't all citizens have the right to voice their opinions? And wouldn't Noam Chomsky, prodigy at MIT, that prestigious institution, be protected by virtue of his position in the academy? Judging by the experience of others in similar situations, the simple answer is "No." Says Chomsky:

The Tet Offensive, 1968

We confidently expected that I'd be in jail in a few years. In fact, that is just what would have happened except for two unexpected events: (1) the utter (and rather typical) incompetence of the intelligence services, which could not find the real organizers of resistance though it was transparent, and kept seeking hidden connections to North Korea, Cuba, or wherever we must have been getting our orders from, as well as mistaking people who agreed to appear at public events as "leaders" and "organizers"; and (2), the Tet Offensive, which convinced American business that the game wasn't worth the candle, and led to the dropping of prosecutions. . . (31 Mar. 1995)

The RLE Senosry Communication group at MIT

Carol's decision to work toward attaining a Ph.D. and, eventually, an academic career, was as difficult to make as Noam's decision to remain politically active. The couple worried about the effect it would have on their children to be raised by working parents; but, of course, both of Noam's parents had taught school throughout his childhood. Back at school, Carol resumed research in a domain to which she had been attracted years earlier: language acquisition. Now, after having had three children, her efforts were enriched by personal experience. She finally secured a position at Harvard's School of Education, and has gone on to enjoy a successful career. In 1969, she published Linguistic Development in Children from 6 to 10, which explores those aspects of grammar acquisition that are delayed to later childhood (most grammar is acquired before the age of five). She has also worked on the language ability of deaf-blind subjects in the Sensory Communication Group of MIT's Research Laboratory of Electronics and studied the invented spelling of children who began writing before learning how to read. Carol's major focus in the past fifteen years has been on educational technology, which she taught at the Graduate School of Education at Harvard until last year, and she has consistently done independent work as well.